What’s the Top 10?

Get your votes in for the Top 10 before the survey closes on December 30th! Enter to win a GoPro, a $100 Toolfarm Store Coupon, or a copy of Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Edition!

Every year we ask you, the users, to vote in the Toolfarm Top 10 Awards to rate your favorite products! It’s that time again where we’re encouraging you to get involved and let us know what you think! Our big survey featuring the top-selling plug-ins to determine the Top 10 favorites for each category. It started out with just Adobe After Effects, which has plenty of delightful plug-ins, and it now includes Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro X, Maxon Cinema 4D, and OFX (which doesn’t have a lot of plug-ins but the platform is growing each year).

So, give your favorite products some love!

Why Vote?

Because every vote counts! The results are a good way to see what your peers in the community are using. Not only that but once you vote you are registered to win one of three great prizes! This year’s prizes are as follows:

First prize – 2 people will each receive a GoPro Hero5 Black, $399.00 Value!

Second prize– 3 people will each receive a $100 Coupon to the Toolfarm Store, Obvious Value!

Third prize – 5 people will each receive a copy of Green Screen Made Easy: Keying and Compositing Techniques for Indie Filmmakers 2nd Edition by Jeremy Hanke and Michele Yamazaki Terpstra

Have a Look at Last Year’s Results

These are the top products of 2015 as voted by our After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, CINEMA 4D, Avid Media Composer, and OFX Users! We had several ties this year, so we are listing the top products for each host.

Adobe After Effects Top 10 – 2015

Trapcode Particular is the industry standard for particle system creation in Adobe After Effects. It’s realistic shading allows spotlights to illuminate particles and logos as they move through 3D space. Give particles depth with Trapcode Particular’s full 3D rotation and use it’s expanded physics controls to generate more support for air resistance and turbulence. Trapcode Particular will take your visual creations to another dimension.

Adobe Premiere Pro Top 10 – 2015

Magic Bullet Looks 3.0 is the easiest, most powerful way to make your video look great. Sporting a major update to its UI and UX, Magic Bullet Looks features 198 brand new, completely customizable presets based on popular film and TV shows. With an intuitive set of tools for creating your own color grade, you’ll understand why Magic Bullet Looks is voted the number one plug-in for professional editors, year after year.

Avid Top 10 – 2015

Titler Pro’s Title Designer and Quick Edit features provide a simple workflow and eliminate the need for expensive motion graphics software. Titler Pro offers a wide array of built-in styles, templates, and animations for a quick start, as well as a wealth of powerful design features for creating and customizing animated titles from the ground up. Titler Pro 4 offers a host of features including 3D text extrusion, custom lighting, and dynamic animations. It hosts OpenFX plugins like GenArts Sapphire and more for enhanced results. Whether generating titles for indie films or primetime, Titler Pro 4 is the editor’s choice for unparalleled titling.

Magic Bullet Looks 3.0 is the easiest, most powerful way to make your video look great. Sporting a major update to its UI and UX, Magic Bullet Looks features 198 brand new, completely customizable presets based on popular film and TV shows. With an intuitive set of tools for creating your own color grade, you’ll understand why Magic Bullet Looks is voted the number one plug-in for professional editors, year after year.

Using a unique system of Questions and Actions you get full control over your particle simulations without the need for Xpresso or Cinema 4D’s native particle system. Particles, fluids, and gaseous simulations all in one place.

We want to give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who participated in this years Top Product Awards!

2014 Results

Adobe After Effects Top 10 – 2014

1. Trapcode Particular

Trapcode Particular is the industry standard for particle system creation in Adobe After Effects. It’s realistic shading allows spotlights to illuminate particles and logos as they move through 3D space. Give particles depth with Trapcode Particular’s full 3D rotation and use it’s expanded physics controls to generate more support for air resistance and turbulence. Trapcode Particular will take your visual creations to another dimension.

Adobe Premiere Pro Top 10 – 2014

1. Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks

Whether you’re warming up a scene or building a palette from scratch, Magic Bullet Looks 2 brings professional color finishing to projects of any budget. It starts out very simple, with 100’s of beautifully designed treatments that range from practical lighting to popular Hollywood cinema.

Apple Final Cut Pro Top 10 – 2014

1. Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks

Whether you’re warming up a scene or building a palette from scratch, Magic Bullet Looks 2 brings professional color finishing to projects of any budget. It starts out very simple, with 100’s of beautifully designed treatments that range from practical lighting to popular Hollywood cinema.

Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Top 10 – 2014

1. FilmConvert

Ever since the introduction of Digital Cameras, digital evangelists have been saying how Film would eventually be superseded and replaced. After several decades, this is finally happening. However, for many people, the look of the digital footage still leaves a lot to be desired and doesn’t look as good straight out of the camera.

I’m not talking about green screen on the show, but I’m talking about something near and dear to my heart… video plug-ins! I wrote a book a few years ago for Focal Press called Plug-in to After Effects.

Larry Jordan talked to Aharon Rabinowitz, head of Marketing at Red Giant; Travis White, Head of Products at NewBlueFX; Me….. Michele Terpstra, Pluginologist at Toolfarm.com; Michael Kammes, Director of Technology at Key Code Media; and others on this week’s show.

The podcast is titled “Obscure, But Highly Useful, Plug-ins”, but they’re not really obscure plug-ins, but they are unique plug-ins…. unique in that there are no other plug-ins that do what they do, and what they do, they do so well. Michele talks about Rowbyte Plexus, Trapcode Tao, Mettle Skybox, RE:Vision Effects ReelSmart Motion Blur and Motion Boutique Newton. The interview was a lot of fun and it’s always an honor to be a guest on Larry’s show, so thank you to Larry, Debbie, and everyone in the background at Digital Production Buzz.

Table of contents

Introduction

In this sub-series in my In Depth: Green Screen series, I’m giving in-depth information on some of my favorite keying tools that work with After Effects, Premiere Pro, and other tools. The first in the series, In Depth: Keying: Part 4: Red Giant Primatte Keyer and Key Correct, went up this summer. After months of nasty computer issues, here’s the second article.

Hawaiki Keyer 3.0 Overview/Review

I’ve pretty much said everything that I need to say in the overview/review video, so this article is a bit on the short side. To sum it up, Hawaiki Keyer v3 does a great job of pulling keys from areas with feathery hair and sheer fabrics. I was impressed. I’ve tried a lot of keyers and it works really well, especially for the price. If you’re doing much keying and looking for a quality keyer that’s inexpensive, take Hawaiki Keyer for a spin. Try a demo first, if you don’t believe me!

Hawaiki Keyer 3.0 Manual

Try a free demo of Hawaiki Keyer

FxFactory can be downloaded from the Toolfarm Downloads page (you must sign in first) and the demo version of Hawaiki Keyer can be installed through FxFactory. There are lots of freebies in FxFactory too!

Other Articles in the In Depth: Keying Series

I’ve done many articles in this In Depth Series on keying tools and several have featured Primatte Keyer and Key Correct. Here are a few.

In Depth: Keying: Part 4: Red Giant Primatte Keyer and Key Correct

Primatte Keyer, Key Correct, and Warps have been used in a few major Hollywood blockbusters you may have heard of, such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, The Matrix, and King Kong. Both products Primatte Keyer and Key Correct are included in Red Giant Keying Suite, along with Red Giant Warp which includes six powerful plug-ins to help in compositing with control of shadows, reflections, glows and corner point warps. Warp runs in After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Apple Motion.

In Depth: Spill Suppression on Keyed Footage

From the article: Spill is the colored light reflected from your background and onto your actor. Spill can show up on light colored clothing or hair, on shiny or reflective elements, around the edge of footage, and it can be a big problem! It can be very easy to fix, or difficult on finely detailed, extremely reflective or semi-transparent areas.

Primatte Keyer and Key Correct use the same Spill Killer technology. Both products are available together in the Red Giant Keying Suite. Spill Killer is very simple at the core. There are not a lot of bells and whistles, but it worked well on the footage. I used slightly different settings for Tolerance so that you can see the difference.

For Primatte Keyer, Enable Spill Killer needs to be checked and the Color Mode set to Green. I set the Range to 58% and set Tolerance and Strength to 100%.

To remove the spill with Key Correct Spill Killer, you just need to apply the effect to your layer. I turned down Tolerance to 51%, and the Range to 58%, which helped to avoid giving the model a red face.

Keying is part technical skill, part patience, and part sorcery. This series will take you through different areas of keying, not so much to teach you step by step, but to talk about some of the problems you’ll run into and how to fix them.

Also check out…

Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Edition

If you’d like more on keying tools and compositing, Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Edition, which I co-authored with Jeremy Hanke of Microfilmmaker Magazine, is now available. It covers everything from creating your own green screen, setting up lights, keying your actors, fixing problems, and compositing methods and tricks.

Toolfarm Professional Training for Primatte Keyer Pro: Toolfarm Expert Series

Learn the Method, Not Just The Software! Angie Mistretta demystifies the complex and powerful Primatte Keyer Pro plug-in from Red Giant Software, which can pull the matte, adjust spill suppression, handle color correction and handle the entire process of keying and matte creation. This training has been out for several years but it is still top-notch.

By Michele Yamazaki Terpstra, Toolfarm.com
(Reprinted with Permission from Toolfarm)

As you may know, I have a book coming out in October 2016 called Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Edition. In the book, I go over the keyers, but because it’s in print, I’m limited to how much space I have. In this series, I’m going IN DEPTH on three of my favorite keying and compositing tools for After Effects and other hosts. I’ve talked a lot about keying tools in the book, on the Toolfarm website, and at user group events. The first article will look at Red Giant Keying Suite, which includes Primatte Keyer and it’s wonderful companion tool, Key Correct.

Table of contents

Introduction

In this series, I’m going to give some in-depth information on three of my favorite keying tools that work with After Effects, Premiere Pro, and other tools. The first in the series covers Red Giant’s Keying Suite, which includes Primatte Keyer, Key Correct Pro, and Warp.

Multiple Edge Matte Tutorial with Primatte Keyer and Key Correct

I have a formula for these In Depth articles. Normally, I start with an overview of the tool or topic, then move on to some information on plug-ins, then lastly, I put in a few tutorials. Well, I thought I’d change things up a bit.

I was just going to come up with a quick tutorial on the basics of using Primatte and Key Correct, but this has already been done. I thought I’d give you something with a little more substance that will hopefully help you generate better keys. This little tutorial was unscripted but goes over a lot of the finer points of using edge mattes, core mattes, garbage mattes and so on. I’m putting this at the top of the article so you won’t miss it!

Red Giant Keying Suite, Primatte Keyer, and Key Correct Highlights

So, to get back to our regularly scheduled programming here’s a bit of information on Primatte Keyer and Key Correct. These tools have been used in a few major Hollywood blockbusters you may have heard of, such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, The Matrix, and King Kong. Both products Primatte Keyer and Key Correct are included in Red Giant Keying Suite, along with Red Giant Warp which includes six powerful plug-ins to help in compositing with control of shadows, reflections, glows and corner point warps. Warp runs in After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Apple Motion.

Seth Worley’s recent film short Go Bag used Red Giant’s Keying Suite and he talks about it at 4:40 in the Making of Video, below. If you want to see the whole film, click here.

Primatte Keyer Features

I asked Aharon Rabinowitz about Red Giant Primatte Keyer and Key Correct about why these tools are worthy. Aharon explains, “Primatte Keyer offers the most user-friendly experience in the industry. The tools make it easy to select your background and foreground for a great key. Just drag the mouse pointer over anything that is background or foreground, and the settings adjust.” I’ll admit that this is the part that confused me when I first tried Primatte Keyer, but after I figured out how to use the tool, it’s really easy and fast.

The latest version of Primatte is 5.0 has three automatic tools that help pull a key.

Auto Compute is now an easy-to-access button with an improved algorithm and spot-on default settings. Aharon says, “Primatte Keyer’s Auto Compute Algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically. You can literally do all or most of the work with the touch of a single button.”

“Adjust Light is a new feature that evens out the background so it’s easier to pull a key.” Aharon explains, “Primatte Keyer can analyze your background and even out the lighting before performing the key, making for a much cleaner background removal.”

Smart Sample is the last new automatic tool and it optimizes the results by smart foreground sampling and a histogram pass.

Compositing Tools

Besides having a state-of-the-art keying system, Primatte also contains compositing tools, including Spill Killer, Color Matcher, and Lightwrap. I talk about these in the video above, however, these tools are also included in Key Correct, and because of my workflow, I used the Key Correct versions.

Key Correct Features

Key Correct includes 15 plug-ins that are not for keying but they help improve your key and fine-tuning Alpha channels, plus it includes several tools for compositing. Key Correct can be used to improve keying results from any keyer, not just Primatte Keyer. Use it with Keylight, Ultimatte, zMatte, and any other tool you may have. Aharon says, “These tools can be used at all stages of the keying/compositing operation. Some of the tools are dedicated to using before you key so that you can start with the best possible footage. Other tools are dedicated to immediately follow the key, and help remove additional color spill or to clean up the matte/alpha channel. Finally, still, others are devoted to giving you the best possible composite with other layers.”

Key Correct includes the following plug-ins for working with alpha channels and compositing:

Alpha Cleaner

Alpha Matte

Color Matcher

Deartifactor

Edge Blur

Edge Finder

KC Denoiser

Light Warp

Matte Feather

Matte Feather EZ

Matte Feather Sharp

Rack Focus

Smooth Screen

Speedy Blur

Spill Killer

Wire/Rig Remover

Zone HLS

Here’s the Key Correct Effect Controls for a few of the filters that I used in the edge matte tutorial above.

More in this Series

I’ve done many articles in this In Depth Series on keying tools and several have featured Primatte Keyer and Key Correct. Here are a few.

In Depth: Spill Suppression on Keyed Footage

From the article: Spill is the colored light reflected from your background and onto your actor. Spill can show up on light colored clothing or hair, on shiny or reflective elements, around the edge of footage, and it can be a big problem! It can be very easy to fix, or difficult on finely detailed, extremely reflective or semi-transparent areas.

Primatte Keyer and Key Correct use the same Spill Killer technology. Both products are available together in the Red Giant Keying Suite. Spill Killer is very simple at the core. There are not a lot of bells and whistles, but it worked well on the footage. I used slightly different settings for Tolerance so that you can see the difference.

For Primatte Keyer, Enable Spill Killer needs to be checked and the Color Mode set to Green. I set the Range to 58% and set Tolerance and Strength to 100%.

To remove the spill with Key Correct Spill Killer, you just need to apply the effect to your layer. I turned down Tolerance to 51%, and the Range to 58%, which helped to avoid giving the model a red face.

Keying is part technical skill, part patience, and part sorcery. This series will take you through different areas of keying, not so much to teach you step by step, but to talk about some of the problems you’ll run into and how to fix them.

See Also

Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Edition

If you’d like more on keying tools and compositing, I have a book coming out this fall, Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Edition, which I co-authored with Jeremy Hanke of Microfilmmaker Magazine. It covers everything from creating your own green screen, setting up lights, keying your actors, fixing problems, and compositing methods and tricks.

Toolfarm Professional Training for Primatte Keyer Pro: Toolfarm Expert Series

Learn the Method, Not Just The Software! Angie Mistretta demystifies the complex and powerful Primatte Keyer Pro plug-in from Red Giant Software, which can pull the matte, adjust spill suppression, handle color correction and handle the entire process of keying and matte creation. This training has been out for several years but it is still top-notch.

You may know that we have a new edition of Green Screen Made Easy, 2nd Ed., coming out in the next couple of months. If you have the first edition, this is probably 85% new content, so it will be worth your while to pick up the new edition. I was on Niel Guilarte’s All Things Post podcast talking about Green Screen Made Easy, learning CINEMA 4D and After Effects, how I got started in the industry, working at Toolfarm, and more.

Here’s an oldie, dug up from the vaults! If you missed the podcast I did for Red Giant TV on May 5, 2009, about Primatte Keyer and Key Correct Pro, and it is surprisingly still very relevant. It’s not just another “here’s how to use the tools” type of video, but I get deep into keying technique with tips to optimize your keying potential.

If you’re interested in learning more about these products, Toolfarm has them at 10% off every day.

Red Giant Keying Suite – Keying Suite is a complete set of professional tools that make your keying look seamless and sells the realism of your composite. Get great results for basic keying situations as well as multi-step composites and difficult shots like low light or choppy footage.

Red Giant Primatte Keyer – Quality, speed, control. That’s what you need from a professional chromakey tool and Primatte Keyer delivers. Version 5.0 gives new levels of automation and efficiency with a reorganized interface, default settings that give great results, and tools to quickly tweak your key. An improved Auto Compute and the new Adjust Light tool are the special sauce in Primatte 5.0, creating an accurate key in a few clicks. Use the new Hybrid Matte for unprecedented control in keeping matte edges clean and a new Smart Sample algorithm for smarter foreground selection. Whether you are creating a documentary film, an indie production, news station promo or music video, Primatte 5.0 is an industry-loved solution that unlocks the secret to an easy, automatic key.

Red Giant Key Correct – Key Correct is an integral part of keeping your composite look natural and realistic. This set of 15 plug-ins can be used to soften alpha channels, match foreground and background colors, fix outlines, and clean up noise. Key Correct is the secret ingredient for top-quality results from popular keyers like Primatte Keyer (our favorite!), Keylight and Ultimatte. You can also download a free trial of any Red Giant plug-in.

Keying is part technical skill, part patience, and part sorcery. This series will take you through different areas of keying, not so much to teach you step by step, but to talk about some of the problems you’ll run into and how to fix them.

Introduction

The scenario for this series of articles is that you have less than perfect greenscreen footage. How could that happen?

You’re a novice filmmaker and you have never done any greenscreen work before.

If you’re getting the footage from someone else and not involved with the shooting, you often don’t know what you’re going to get. I worked with producers at my old post-house who would bring in the footage and we did the magic. While we could have shot it in our studio, producers often wanted to save money and do it themselves. Also, if you join a film production after the film is already in full swing, you may not be able to be involved.

Your equipment is not “professional”.

If your footage is crummy (i.e.: noisy, not properly lit, not properly shot, badly planned), no amount of post production will make it look good. “Garbage in, garbage out”, as they say. This series of articles will focus on problems that you’ll run into with less than stellar footage. This is not so much a “how-to key” article and I may not go in order as far as work flow, but I will talk about some issues you may run into in the post production process.

For this first article, I’m going to address some of the commonly asked questions I’ve had about working with greenscreen. These are mostly questions about production, not post production. The post production questions will be answered in future articles specific to topics such as spill, edge correction, holes in the matte, garbage mattes, light wrap, compositing tricks and more.

I want to give a special thanks to filmmaker Jason James, who gave me a bunch of footage to use in my book, Plug-in to After Effects. I’m re-utilizing some of the footage in this greenscreen series. Check out Jason’s film Dirty Bomb.

Jeremy Hanke and I co-authored a greenscreen book called Greenscreen Made Easy: Keying and Compositing Techniques for Indie Filmmakers. Although the title says “Indie Filmmakers” the fact is, it’s the perfect book for anyone who is new to keying or hasn’t done it in a while. We specifically wrote the book in a no-fluff manner, and very straight forward, because, hey, who has time for extraneous facts?

Jeremy wrote the first half of the book, which dives into topics like lighting, making your own live monitoring, etc. I wrote the second half, about post production.

Keying Terminology

I’ll be throwing around a bunch of fancy words and so you know what I’m talking about, here’s a rundown of a few that I mention in this article.

Chroma Keying – You might have noticed that term just above. Chroma means color. Keying refers to removing an object by “pulling” the color or range of color from the foreground layer to make an area transparent, revealing the layer behind it.

Clean Plate – The greenscreen with nothing in front of it. Rolling 5-10 seconds of your greenscreen without your actors in it, can save you hours in post. Normally this shot is a locked down shot or you are using a motion controlled camera.

Spill – Reflected green on your subject.

The collar of her coat has some very bad spill. Spill is easier to fix that you might think. I’ll go into that in a future article. Footage: Hollywoodcamerawork.com

Keying FAQ (Frequently Asked Question)

Which is better: green screen or blue screen?

If you’re shooting digital, most people will tell you to go for green. The question is a lot more complicated than this and has to do with color sampling. Digital green is brighter than digital blue. Lightcraft Technology has a nice article on their site that explains this.

Notice how light the greenscreen background looks in the green channel.

Green and blue are much less prominent in skin tones than red so its easier to pull a key with those hues without screwing up the skin tone. You can really use any color. It will depend on what you are shooting.

Did you know that the first film to use keying technology was Mary Poppins and they did not use blue or green? They used the Sodium Vapor Process in which an actor is filmed in front of a white screen that is lit with powerful sodium vapor lights which glow in a very narrow spectrum. A special camera with a prism separated the created a matte and a counter matte. This technique was very accurate and did not create problems with spill or skin tones but was very expensive.

What is the best shade of green to use for green screen? What should I make my greenscreen out of?

There are chroma paints, papers and curtains on the market that are exactly the shade of green you need, but they can be expensive. I highly recommend Greenscreen Made Easy: Keying and Compositing Techniques for Indie Filmmakers, and not just because my name is on the cover! Jeremy, my co-author, has a fantastic method of making a greenscreen on the cheap with linoleum, PVC pipe and paint. Plus, he did hundreds of color tests and found a shade of Olympia paint that is very close to the more expensive chroma paint.

If you’re doing it on the cheap, the key is to get the green as saturated as you can and a slightly brighter shade green.

It’s not just the color to consider, but the surface. If you’re using fabric, make sure that it’s not wrinkly or that you can’t see through it. Make sure you don’t have texture on your greenscreen either. I kid you not, I was sent some footage that was shot over plush green carpeting. The color of the carpet wasn’t bad but the texture was impossible, with shadows from the tufts of carpet. I’ve also seen a greenscreen painted with glossy paint which made hot spots a big problem.

Should I shoot my subjects over greenscreen or gather my BG plates first?

Get your background elements together first. It’s much easier to match lighting and camera angles in a studio with your actors than it is with background elements, especially if you’re using footage that you have no control over like stock footage.

If you can’t shoot on location in Korea with your actors, make sure you have your background plates first so that you can match position and light your actors properly in the studio.

When you are shooting your greenscreen elements, use the background elements as reference. Either print out screen grabs, watch it on a laptop on set, or better yet, use a live keyer to test key your shots. Make sure your lighting angles and camera angles are right. It’s much easier to shoot it right than to fix it in post!

What are the best camera settings to use when shooting greenscreen?

Use the highest quality settings that your camera will allow, and capture your footage with the highest quality settings as well.

Set your camera to manual. You don’t want your camera to auto focus or auto iris as the actor moves through the frame.

Use a shallow depth of field to keep your subject in focus while blurring your greenscreen. This will hide any wrinkles in fabric greenscreens or any flaws. We’re not talking super shallow. In other words, with some lenses, you can have your actors hair out of focus and their nose in focus. You’ll want to keep all of your foreground elements sharp and soften your background only. Note: If you’re using tracking dots, do not use a shallow depth of field.

Do Not Use In-Camera Sharpening. This will increase contrast around the edges of your subject causing a halo or jagged edges.

Notice the funky artifacting around the edges of the subject, likely due to the compression and the in-camera sharpening algorithms.

Motion blur is a big problem to key, so shoot with a high shutter speed. Motion blur is very easy to add in post with RE:Vision Effects ReelSmart Motion Blur, which is not expensive and looks realistic.

Motion blur is problematic, so shoot with a fast shutter speed to minimize motion blur.

Shoot progressive so you don’t lose half of your resolution when you remove field interlacing. Yes, you can key interlaced fields, but if you’re shooting vertically and plan to rotate or scale interlaced footage, you’re inviting a mess of problems.

Scaling fields is problematic!

You can try using a polarizing filter to manage glare and reflections, if you’re shooting a car, glass or other reflective surfaces. This is not a magic bullet (that is something entirely different!) and will change your colors so use it with caution.

Why should I shoot a clean plate?

Some keyers, like PHYX Keyer, Ultimatte (remember Ultimatte!? People loved Ultimatte but it’s no longer updated for Adobe products) and DV Garage DV Matte, will utilize a clean plate to help you pull a cleaner key by comparing the clean plate with the footage with your actor. When you’re shooting your clean plate, make sure you use the exact same settings as you do with your actor. Don’t zoom or refocus the camera lens reposition the camera or lights.

This is a clean plate. Don’t get too excited.

What about using a luminance card for matching black levels in post? What does this mean and why should I do this?

Nothing yells “fake” like mismatched black levels between the background and foreground elements. A cheap and easy solution to matching them is to create your own card with a square each of black, 50% gray and white. Shoot 5 seconds before you shoot your greenscreen footage and your background plates. Just match them up by adjusting levels during your color correcting portion of the process (after keying).

What is the #1 thing that most people don’t do when they’re shooting greenscreen that will cost them the most time and money in post?

Oh, that one is easy! Prepare and test! Take some test shots and if you’re on the VFX team, get involved in pre-production.

Let me tell you a little story about a film I worked on a couple of years ago. It was a low budget production with a talented DP and a director who had not worked on visual effects before. I joined the crew right as principal shooting was beginning. There were no storyboards, just the directors descriptions. When we go to the big scene, I finally realized what was going to be needed so I suggested that they get a large greenscreen and hang it above the set. They didn’t have any budget for this so the costume designer sewed together some bright green fabric. The color or the fabric was very close to what I needed, however, the lights behind it caused it to be very unevenly lit and it needed to be so high in the air that it was much too small. Because it was so high in the air and strung up with ropes, it wasn’t as taut as it should be and it waved and billowed. I bought ALL of the fabric from that store and we were out of time and budget anyway.

It’s probably needless to say but the shot didn’t turn out at all. I left the production before the end but I highly doubt they ended up using those shots. I saw the rough cut and they used 3D instead.

Other shots in the film used a smaller greenscreen and shots were so dark that it was impossible to get a decent key. Oh how some storyboards and getting some VFX people involved before shooting could have saved a lot of headaches, money, time and rotoscoping!

Be prepared. Make sure everything is storyboarded out before your test. Make sure your angles will work and your greenscreen is not too close or far from your actors. Have printouts or some reference of your background elements so that you can match angles and lighting.

Make sure your actor is not standing too close to your greenscreen because it will cause shadows.

Proper lighting of your actor and greenscreen is CRUCIAL. Don’t over light or under light. It’s easier to increase the exposure of darker footage than it is to fix footage that has areas blown out, but underlit footage can cause dark shadows along the edges of your actor.

Shoot test shots with actors (or stand-ins) in costume. You’ll want to make sure the costumes don’t bring in problems with the color, reflectivity or surfaces that are difficult to key. Colors look different over green screen.

Make sure you don’t have bad spill on your actor. This is often tough to see on set and you won’t know until you do some test keys. Maybe the bright green burns the retinas. I don’t know. Believe it or not, grays and tans can look slightly green and will cause issues with color change when you’re keying.

Look closely at your greenscreen. Make sure you can’t see light through your greenscreen and that it’s not too wrinkly or moving. Look for hot spots and shadows. Make sure it is evenly lit, especially in the areas where you will need to key around your actor.

Test camera settings.

Slate your tests and take notes as you make changes. When you get back into your NLE to check your tests, cross reference what worked and what didn’t.

Yes, it will definitely take extra time up front, but this can potentially save days from your post-production budget and can save your entire film.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series which begins the focus on post-production.